The proposed studies examine the sign language processing skills of prelingually deaf signers who have signed for a substantial amount of time, 30 years. The hypothesis under investigation is that signers processing of sign language reflects the extent to which either speech or sign was accessible in their early environment during early childhood. Accessibility for sign is measured by age of first exposure to sign. Accessibility to speech is measured by hearing ability. Four groups of signers will be tested. Native signers who first learned to sign from their deaf parents; the three remaining groups all had normally hearing parents. The second group are early childhood signers who first learned to sign in school between the ages of 3 and 6 and the third group are signers who first learned to sign in school between the ages of 7 and 10. The fourth group of signers first learned to sign in and out of school between the ages of 11 and 20. The subjects' hearing and vision will be tested. Next the extent to which they use visual or acoustic coding in short-term memory for signs will be measured. Third, the subjects' memory for sign sentences in two dialects of sign will be measured for immediate recall. Fourth, the subjects' recall of sign text in several dialects will be measured in terms of long-term organization of sentence and discourse structure. Last, the subjects' spontaneous sign will be analyzed linguistically through an interview about the communication available in their early environment. All the sign processing measures will then be compared and contrasted. The goal of the proposed studies is to identify and describe subpopulations of deaf signers who are hypothesized to process sign differently as a function of early language accessibility. The dat and results will clarify the heterogeneity in the sign skills of the deaf population and thus further understanding of language development and use in the deaf population both psychologically and eventually neuropsychologically.